I had a couple of comments posted on my last entry that I thought might be worth posting an open response to. I hope some others get some insight from these questions…

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Anonymous said:
“Hello. I’m curious to know what made you get an MA in Education in conjunction with your MBA. I was looking at your profile and it seems your background is in Computer Science/Engineering, and now work at McKinsey. How does your degree in Education help you in your current job? Do you recommend future Stanford GSB’ers to do this dual degree option?”

Response:
I get asked that question a lot, so I’m surprised that I haven’t ever done a post about it before…actually, i might have, but I’ve done so many entries over the past 3.5 years that I don’t remember if I did.

Anyways, I always start off my answer to this question by categorizing my educational background areas as follows:

Technology –> My interest
Business –> My need
Education –> My passion (actually, this is more the road to my passion)

Since early in high school, I was intrigued by Technology and software especially caught my attention, so I decided to pursue a Computer Science undergrad major. I briefly thought about trying to jump right into business out of college, but doing so didn’t make much sense to me at the time. My ultimate career plan at the time was to start my own software company, so I chose to follow the software development career route at the beginning, with the intention of transitioning over to business eventually. My thinking was that I would be able to get more respect from the techies working for me if I could say “well, I used to do the same sort of work that you do now”…also, I believed that transitioning ver to business would be easy once I proved myself in Tech, but I was very wrong with that. Once I started getting bored with software engineering a couple of years after undergrad, I wanted to move over into business, but I soon found that it would be almost impossible to transition into doing project management without going back to grad school, so I went off to get my first Master’s degree in IT Mgmt. Unfortunately, even with that grad degree, I found the transition to be difficult at the company I was with at the time because I’d been in Tech for so long that I had effectively tracked myself as a “techie” for good…that is, unless I were to get an MBA and build up some business skills to get a fresh start. Getting an MBA became the greatest “career need” for me and I put as much effort into getting into a good Bschool as I could. I hadn’t even thought about getting a grad degree in Education at that time, so I chose my Bschool with only the strength of the MBA program as a consideration.

One thing that really drives me is the desire to give back…it’s something that I’ve always done for as long as i can remember and, over time, I’ve tried to come up with bigger and better way to do so. I eventually decided that I aspired to start non-profits in the future that would help kids like me do the sort of things that I’ve done. With this, I mean that I want to come up with ways to get kids from rural communities to aspire to go to college and find success. I’d like to expand this to cover kids in the inner city, as well, but my early focus will be on small town kids. Soon after starting at the GSB, I began to hear about the joint degree program and started looking into it. I soon realized that the courses I could take over in the School of Education would be useful in helping me figure out how to make my non-profit idea work, which sparked the interest in applying. Then, I found out that I could complete the MA in Education within the same two years that I’d be getting the MBA and wouldn’t have to pay any additional tuition. So, it basically made sense for me to join the program and learn as much as I can as long as I was willing to work harder to get all of the credits in. At times, it was very difficult to manage the courseload, but the content of the Ed classes kept me interested and it all worked out. I probably won’t put those lessons to use for another 15-20, but it’ll definitely help me shaping my non-profit ideas in my head until then.

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Sudha said:
“Hi Marquis, I am a regular reader of ur blog and I get a lot of insights into Stanford through ur eyes (or ur blog rather). There is something I would like you to add. I want to know what are all the avenues at Stanford to explore? I wasn’t able to contact current yr students, all seem to be busy. Like the NetImpact conference,etc, what are the avenues/events/contests that you saw during ur time there? Also, if someone were to enter the consumer goods industry I don’t see many companies recruiting at Stanford. You have any friends who took up that industry? Another question is, how does a 10 day GMIX experience help people? How much do you learn in 10 days? Thanks a lot, Subha (from India)”

Response:
Wow, this is a difficult question to answer because there are so many avenues to explore if you get into the GSB. It all depends on what you’re interested in. If you want to be an entrepreneur after school, you could join the Entrepreneurship Club, attend the annual E-conference, or participate in any of the business plan competitions that are held at Stanford University. If you’re interested in Venture Capital or Private Equity, you could join the VC Club, visit any number of firms on Sandhill Road, or take any of the entrpereneurship/VC/PE-related classes that the GSB or other Stanford departments offer. If you are interested in diversity, there are a ton of ethnic, cultural, gender, and lifestyle-related organizations at the GSB and many of them either have conferences, events, or special receptons/dinners where you can learn a lot from current students, alums, and industry insiders. So, as you can probably tell, the possibilities are so numerous that it is difficult to list them all out. I’d recommend that you check out the GSB website and look for the listing of student organizations currently in operation…chances are that, if you’re interested in some topic, there is an org at the GSB that will touch it in some way.

Re: the consumer goods industry –> I’m not 100% sure, but I figure that you wouldn’t see a lot of CPG companies recruiting on campus at the GSB because many of those firms do major recruiting at conferences in the Fall/Winter or wait until the Spring to see what their short-term needs are for summer or full-time hires. I had several classmates who wanted to go into Marketing at CPG companies as a career and ran into some initial difficulty because employers that came to campus weren’t hiring for a ton of spots. So, they took it upon themselves to “pound the pavement” and work whatever resources/networks were available through the GSB and elsewhere and many of them came out of it with fantastic jobs. One of my favorite stories is of my girl Kristin who came to the GSB straight out of undergrad and wanted to go into Marketing. She knew that she would have to put it extra work to get her break because of her lack of post-collegiate work experience. She ended up spending countless hours in the library over Winter break of our first year research CPG companies and figuring out how she could get an in with them. As a result of all that work, she was able to secure an internship in Brand Management at P&G (Clairol specifically) and, after kicking butt during her internship, secured a full-time offer, which she accepted. All it takes it a little hard work and you can make it happen for yourself, whether a ton of companies come to campus or not.

The GMIX is a chance to learn a TON about business in an international context in only a few weeks. I don’tknow where you heard about GMIX assignments being only 10 days long though. I’ve heard that the vast majority of them are more like 3-4 weeks long. i didn’t do a GMIX during my MBA summer, but I kick myself often for not doing so. It’s not very often that you get a chance to do a quick assignment for a company in another country with absolutely no pressure with the sole intention of making sure you learn as much as you can. Plus, you can pick a company in a country or an industry that you probably would have never thought you’d be interested in. I wish I could say more about them, but I’m basically an outsider-looking-in when it comes to that part of the GSB experience.

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Before I go, here’s a new candidate for the funniest thing I’ve seen in 2007 Link